I think that $10 million is a great answer for "how much money is more than you'll ever need".
Significantly more than that, and you're a hoarder.
Significantly more than that, and you're a hoarder.
The question is, try to spend $1bn on stuff. Go.
So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house). That gets you to your first $500m. After that, stuff gets WAY "cheaper" where you just run out of things generally before even hitting $1bn.
And then at the end of it we try to imagine what it's like having stuff worth $250bn. And there's just no way to make that tangible.
I did try this with my son and he said he'd buy an A-list soccer team. But I feel that starts to get into "buying companies that make you MORE money" territory.
At a much smaller scale, it seems to be that $10mn is so much that you could live in a $2m house (good by any standard in any location), have a stable of cars, have full-time help, fly first class or even private everywhere, and vacation as much as you want. Or am I off by a lot given inflation?
We were in a huge fine art bubble up to covid. This decade has been a much different story. It is a boring news story though compared to a Ken Griffin balling out last decade buying his favorite paintings for incredible sums of money.
https://www.ams-tax.com/blog/post/the-secret-world-of-art-ta...
1. Do you have children, and if so, are they going to expensive private schools or have other expensive hobbies
2. Are you planning on stopping working, and how many years do you need to support at what lifestyle
3. Debt
4. Do you support others, like parents, etc
5. Do you have health issues, or will you, that will be expensive to support
There are more factors but these are just some that prevent 10M from being enough.
In reality, if you have $10 million, you put it in the S&P500 and make an average of 10% ($1 million) per year. Far more than inflation and more than enough to cover those things you're talking about unless you have a pretty extreme medical condition or very expensive hobbies.
and the S&P was flat at 1.6% for the decade
despite some pretty amazing technical innovations pocket calculator and microcomputer (Altair 8800), first email, pong, floppy disks (they were the standard for 20 years), VCR, cell phone (1973 Motorola), barcode scanners, rubiks cube, ...
Nah not really.
Nominally S&P500 did 23% in the 70s, and 2.08% annualised, but financial returns are not just the stock prices, they're also dividends.
If you include and reinvest dividends, you'd have made 83% in the decade and 6.2% per year.
Its true inflation was high though, and an investment in Jan 1970 would've in real terms returned -1.1% a year after adjusting for inflation. If you continued investing equal amounts each year from 1970 to 1980, it'd actually be about -0.5%.
But no investment would've meant you lost half of all your money due to 7% average inflation, so investing would've been a pretty good idea, offsetting almost all inflation in the worst decade 50 years ago.
Also it's common knowledge to do a stock/bond split. Bond returns fared a bit better. -- and it should be said, the following decade inflation came way down and in nominal terms the S&P500 did +364% with dividends reinvested.
I do agree with your general point though, you can't just rely on a 10% annual average and spend that amount. The commonly referenced safe withdrawal rate (WR) of 4% is 2.5x less than the average S&P500 return for a good reason (based on a ton of monte carlo sims that indeed would lead to disastrous results at 10% WR in the 1970s).
I’m very, very far from rich, yet
1. University costs nothing for everyone
2. Good social safety net, but yes, having own retirement savings is very important.
3. Not for school or medical, the two biggest reasons in the US.
4. Free healthcare for all, aged care, etc.
5. Free healthcare for all.
It’s eye opening to see that the American dream is now “live a quality of life that dozens of countries take for granted”.
$10M and more buys true freedom and reach to global travel and countries. All of those free things in Europe require certain level of native labor and population aging fast is not helpin that across globe.
Meanwhile dozens of countries are doing the above without immense debt.
The US trade deficit isn't ever really meant to be repaid, it's basically the modern equivalent of the Roman Republic/Empire demanding tribute from weaker states with a thin veneer of "I'll pay you back" to make it more palatable.
Like the time the homeless dude living under a bridge near me asked to "borrow" 50€ from me :)
In the countries that do have this it’s often much harder to make $10M. Also the context of this is Woz, aka the US.
Which is a good thing because then everyone has a good quality of life, not just those with lots of money.
Maybe that's why? I know rich people (truly rich, not your upper middle class or rich as in I got a couple mils of net worth), in developed countries (West and Northern Europe) and to be honest your points, apart from being tangled and repetitive just so you can get 5, don't reflect their reality and are just a setup for your last politically charged line.
I'm sure with tens of millions of dollars in your hands, you'd wait for that 20 minute doctor's appointment for 3 months, then another 8 for your MRI. Especially when your kid gets sick god forbid.
You’ve been fed so much propaganda and disinformation you can’t even separate truth from fiction. Reality is nothing like this.
$10M generates a passive $400k per year (trinity study 4% rule yada yada). If you can’t manage on $400k/year, you might be what we call extremely out of touch.
Need to get that set up before the yacht brochures start arriving in the mail. Before the dark whispers take hold...
It seems like in your head "professional arm candy" must be female.
"Boy-toys" are a thing, and people from the Kardashian mother to the local gay nightlife empresario have them :)
By assuming that "professional arm candy" must be of one gender... You've kinda accidentally made a sexist remark, ironically enough ^^"
Didn't say that, you are projecting. I will assume now tho, HN has this untraveled suburban teenage male vibe when it comes to anything except code. That period when they discover Rand and are good a specific set of narrow problems.
Doesn't saying that "professional arm candy" is sexist imply that it is a term limited to only one gender?
Also, fyi, I'm 32, I was born in Paris, moved to Houston when I was 6, to London when I was 18, to Paris when I was 19, then Marseille, Grasse, and Lyon.
I'm currently writing this from the Stockholm airport, waiting for my flight home to France, and I've never read Ayn Rand, because her work seems to completely ignore the importance of cooperation, which I believe is the key to a happy and successful life :)
- I want to build a human cloning startup to build whole-body, HLA-neutral, antigen-clean, headless clones. Taken to the extreme, this cures all cancers except brain and blood cancers, and it could expand the human lifespan/healthspan to be 200 years or more.
- I want to build directed energy systems to manipulate the weather and climate.
- I want to build an open source cloud, open source social layer, open source social media and actually get them real traction against the incumbents. Distributed media exchange layer that is P2P, not federated. Rewire the internet to be fault-tolerant and censorship immune.
- I want to train frontier AI models and make them open. I want to build massive amounts of high quality training data and make it all available (with a viral license).
- I want to build open source hardware. Tractors, automotive EVs, robots, stuff you can hack and own and exchange and print parts for.
- I want to build infra for my city.
I couldn't stop coming up with ideas for things to build.
But, alas, I'm still stuck here at the bottom wondering why a compound in Hawaii could be cooler than these things.
Building infra for your city would be great (I wish Denver had an actual metro system and not just half-assed light rail for large swaths of the area). But you're going to have to deal with the legality of that beyond simply budgetary concerns-- liability, at least, and also things like eminent domain against people who may not want to sell.
The OSS stuff already has people working on it and depends more on market share than technical know-how at this point. Depending on whether AI will actually prove monumental in long-term history, simply buying e.g. OpenAI and open-sourcing their stuff might be the most history-altering thing you could do with a trillion (or it could be a footnote, depending on how things play out).
All of those things take massive investments in time, a compound in Hawaii does not.
https://www.spend-elon-fortune.com/
Buying all this stuff that seems expensive, but then seeing that it barely makes a dent in a truly wealthy person’s fortune.
Of course, he wants even more…
I'm still a fan of libraries. Just not private philanthropy displacing what should be public utilities and institutions.
The rest: charities.
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/2s9u0s/comment/c...
> So then you start with big ticket items (like maybe a yacht or a house)
You answered your own question. Very boring and selfish answer, and just serving yourself (ie, greed).
Your son has more creativity than you.
If you are given $1B in hard cash, and the first thing you do is spend it on yourself. You are probably the worst person to ever get a windfall.
That gets a lot easier to spend if you decide you want to explore space or something.
For reference, on $1bn that's $40M/year or about $100k/day in earnings if you just have the cash in a money market account.
A skyscraper. An eco-friendly village. A ship. A spacecraft.
High end audio equipment. Done. Next!
Usually, they say that you can maintain your wealth (adjusted for inflation) indefinitely by using the so-called "safe withdrawal rate" [0], which people put between 1% and 4%.
So, say that you have $1M in wealth, and you pick your SWR at 2%. It means that you can use 2% of that, or $20,000, every year, knowing that your wealth will keep growing at least by the inflation rate, for a long time (30 years, or 100, or whatever).
If you have $10M, you can spend $200,000/year.
Clearly, it depends on your lifestyle how much you need to have saved in order to FIRE (Financially Independent, Retired Early).
All of this assumes that for the next 30, 40 years, we will not see any catastrophic or monumental changes in how the financial system works.
You want to buy a social network.
Or see if you can swing an election to your favor.
That's what you do with $Bs. It's usually not very good.
https://direkris.itch.io/you-are-jeff-bezos
... which even has its own wiki page:
I'll bite. Private island, superyacht, G7, prime mansions in LA, NYC, London, Singapore, collection of old masters, part owner in an NFL team, establish a foundation and trusts for the kids/grandkids, trip to space. Easy
Buy an election.
If not, buy a newspaper, a TV network or a media outlet with a good outreach.
Then you can get you 1B back tenfold.
Museums. I love museums. They all need more support. Kids need more places to do field trips.
Libraries ... they are experiencing budget cuts everywhere now as cities prioritize police spending.
Parks.
Homes for people that can't afford them. Seriously, one of the most effective possible cures for homelessness is to set up a program that helps people cover their rent for a month or two if they get into trouble.
Health care. Like, there's got to be a pile of people that need urgent health care and can't afford it, right?
Education. Adult education, too.
Science and research.
And most, maybe all of these, aren't even things that necessarily need an entirely new organization to spearhead them, or some kind of dramatic social change. They are all things that exist right now and need more funding than anything else. You could hire a small team to just look up all kinds of programs all day long and write checks for them and it would be enormously impactful.
I just... the answer to this seems so blindingly obvious to me, and then I read the rest of the comments, and I really wonder when exactly the hacker ethos got co-opted by the crab mentality.
My answer because I don’t see it: climate change research. A billion isn’t much but if it can help save the planet that would be worth it to me personally.
Even a trillion dollars I could probably spend. I like sailboats so a yacht sounds nice, but I cannot believe it even a fraction of the satisfaction of developing some research, or of having the fundamental research itself done.
A million dollars is, roughly speaking, a person-year of dedicated professional services from a world-class professional of almost any profession. There are a few exceptions, like stockbrokers, surgeons, and some kinds of lawyers. But a billion dollars buys you, say, 1000 person-years of the best professionals.
For millions of dollars, you could have your own vaccination program, your own particle accelerator, your own web browser, your own steel mill, your own religious cult, your own pyramid, your own AI research lab, your own permaculture experiment station, your own rare book collection (which you could digitize), and so on.
That's leaving aside personal consumption of things like a diplomatic passport from a foreign country, a private doctor, a comfortable apartment in a former missile silo, and a helicopter to get to it with. Your yacht isn't going to do you much good if you get arrested in a foreign country on trumped-up charges because you unintentionally insulted the wrong guy's daughter, or if your cancer goes undiagnosed until stage 4.
Not all hope is lost; Zhu Yuanzhang was born a peasant and was iliterut before becoming an orphan and a homeless beggar. On top of that, his oldest friend tried to murder him! And that worked out brilliantly in the end.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brewster%27s_Millions_(1985_fi...
Genie: I’ll give you one billion dollars if you can spend 100M in a month. There are 3 rules: No gifting, no gambling, no throwing it away
SRE: Can I use AWS?
Genie: There are 4 rules
Can I mine crypto?
Easy: The largest ship in the world by area. (Goal - either 500m x 500m, or at least 0.25km^2 with the breadth >= 300m)
The current status quo for bulk carriers are the Valemax ships (360m x 65m), with each one costing around $100 million. (actual figure wildly varies, but sticks around that number)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valemax#Sale_of_ships
https://www.tradewindsnews.com/containerships/evergreen-adds...
(500 * 500) / (360 * 65) = 10.683760683760683
10.68 * $100 million = $1.068 billion
Even just going with 5 Valemax ships side-by-side (360m x 325m) costs half a billion.
Here's a few random frustrations I have:
Most modern hardware appliances are not easily repaired or hackable. I'd love to manufacture and sell open hardware appliances which prioritize repairability and maintainability, including sharing the CAD models and opening up the firmware.
Despite the years of effort that have gone into the Linux Desktop Experience, it still often lacks polish in various areas. You could afford to hire world class engineers and designers to fix up every minor annoyance and really provide the most deluxe desktop experience possible without compromising on the slightest detail. Not only that, you could contract companies to add Linux support for any essential tools and applications which aren't already supported.
And that's not even getting into the ability to fund the creation of really outstanding media. Most modern kid's entertainment treats them like morons while slapping them in the face with basic lessons. You could create some truly delightful kid shows without having to skimp on any aspect, and really lay the foundations for creating a brighter future. Embed lessons of every major topic as part of the show without being hamfisted about it, and when they start to encounter those challenging topics in school they will have some foundational models on which to build upon. A basic example: you can teach a kid the fundamentals of calculus from an intuitive perspective, and when they actually learn proper calculus in school it'll be much easier to ramp up.
Heck, you could fund the modernization of a ton of college level educational content with enough money. Buy the rights to any important textbooks, rewrite as needed, then make them freely available. Hire a team of world class artists, animators, and builders to help create supporting materials / content that cover any topic. Pair that with world class educators and experts. You put that all together and create the most powerful repository of high quality educational content that the world has ever seen. By doing this you're laying the foundations for the development of future generations and setting them up for success!
Those are just some quick thoughts which I'm willing to write up here... If I thought about it longer I'd probably be able to come up with more significant quality of life improvements that could be spread out if someone was willing to spend a few billion dollars into making them into a reality.
Oh here's a final quick one: funding maker spaces across the country. It's not clear how much potential could be unlocked if we had widely available maker spaces where people can ask for help with their projects and ideas. Sometimes all it takes is having someone who can point you to the right tools or people.
Try to reduce stray animal suffering across a single city here in India. Or if you somehow are successful, extend that to the country.
If you think that leaves you with a lot of funds, maybe provide a few villages with healthcare checkups for a few days.
Make it 500 people and give them housing.
What to use those people for is left as an exercise for the reader.
But if you want to build something for society and not die doing it then you might need more than $10M.
My dad built tents for diabetes research in Africa, I think that's pretty interesting and helpful. He's never had even a million dollars.
You need way less than you think.
If that's the case then it's no longer just for you, so I think that's fair
Whereas with $10 billion, you'll get $400 million a year, or about $7.5 million PER WEEK!
I think guys like Musk and Andreesen (&SBF) might have gone insane just trying to spend their money.
This isn't your point, but $400k puts you in a top tax bracket, so figure 30% of that goes to taxes. that brings your return down to 2.8%. The Fed wants to keep inflation at 2%, but it's usually a bit higher, leaving your real return at 0.3%. That's $30k per year.
Years ago I lived on $40 per month, after building my own cabin in Oregon -- wood heat, kerosene lanterns. Then I bought an Apple II and things got more complicated (https://www.atariarchives.org/deli/cottage_computer_programm...). But basically I agree with you. Most people will never have that much, or need it.
1. Equity in companies or loans to the government.
2. Expensive food, homes, clothes, hotel stays, travel, child care, etc.
Things I'd do if I didn't have to raise money, find investors, etc.
Bribe/payoff whoever I had to and then build a real transit system in LA,SF,Seattle as one example.
Consider making a museum/expo-center that's like the Lucas Museum (https://www.lucasmuseum.org/) but centered around Video Games and/or Interactive Digital Art.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A33...
https://www.reddit.com/r/ifiwonthelottery/comments/9qv4e1/po...
That's why they need more than $10 million for space exploration, or for setting up giant factories to make any kind of goods, for developing massive infrastructure, for warfare, etc etc.
Anyone finding themselves agreeing with ideas like 100% marginal taxes needs to look deep into their own soul and understand where it originates from and then go back and learn history and read authors like Hayek, Mises, and Sowell.
Sowell - “I have never understood why it is ‘greed’ to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.”
And I don’t need anyone else’s money. I’m doing fine. I think other people need the rich’s money.
There’s not enough rich people with enough money/assets/wealth to actually make a difference and even worse nobody will be rich once you try take from them. That experiment has literally been tried dozens and dozens of times with 100% failure rate. Economies are organic organisms and your type of ideas as cyanide.
Please educate yourself and stop believing in fairy tales. Socialism is also extremely unethical and even evil from religious perspectives.
If you need a quick starter guide you can read
https://iea.org.uk/publications/socialism-the-failed-idea-th...
to get some basics.
I’d be curious what educational system you went through that failed to teach the dark evil and catastrophic consequences of your 100% marginal tax rate type ideas.
They could make a difference to some. Also consider the harm they do to the system through their politics. It's not just the wealth hoarding, it's the attacks on education and social safety nets.
I think in practice you want to take steps towards structural wealth equality. It's a problem when someone has their big ideas and step-functions a society into them. I have enough intellectual humility to admit that my conception of what policies and systems we need would most likely not work in practice. But changing a few things to be more socialist, measuring, then course correcting would be nice for once. Instead we get Capital and their purchased representation telling us what works and stepping towards what's good for them.
Also apologies but I won't read a 400 page book on your recommendation. But looking over the topics covered it seems to be about states that tried a command economy. To me a command economy is obviously foolish. How is a government, notorious a slow moving decision maker, going to replace the free market? As you said it's an organism. It's complicated with millions of actions happening in parallel. I want incentives to be changed - ideally with as few changes as possible.
This is constantly happening actually and constantly failing.
> To me a command economy is obviously foolish.
And who exactly distributes or allocated your confiscated money from your 100% marginal tax rate?
> I want incentives to be changed - ideally with as few changes as possible.
Ask yourself why? is it because something is broken and you think this will fix it? that’s the classic empathy narrative which I guarantee is actually nothing but envy masquerading as empathy.
Most of the people who comment like this most likely have lived since birth in a stable, western democracy with social and economic security and they don’t know anything else. They don’t know what living in a dictatorship is like, or under a fully corrupt government bureaucracy where only nepotism or favoritism gets you ahead. All they’ve known is their little, stable corner of the world, protected by the largest military and economic powerhouse in history, and they don’t appreciate it.
Jeff Bezos has created many, many millions of jobs while selling essential goods at margins sometimes below 1%. If his reward was stolen after $10m, why would he have bothered slaving away?
Aside the blatant jealousy factor, it's economic suicide and contains shadows of economic systems which have led to the deaths of tens of millions of people.
You people really can’t imagine someone thinking they have enough?
Because Bezos has no incentive to employ them after Amazon was a small business.
The jealousy is so strong that you'd rather stomp on the necks of millions to prevent one billionaire owning a yacht.
My English may not be enough to express it but above all else it exhudes a "clarity of purpose" that is remarkable